Boston adult posing as teen is found out after her ‘father’ came to school

After a man showed up at a Boston high school complaining that his daughter had been bullied, staff members discovered that the student in question was an adult woman who fraudulently attended three public schools in this academic year, the superintendent said.

The woman was ordered to stay away from Boston Public Schools and is now under police investigation, Superintendent Mary Skipper said in a letter to students’ families on Tuesday.

TV station WCVB said the woman is in her 30s.

The alleged fraud came to light on Wednesday, June 14, at English High School, in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood, a police report said.

The “father” came to the school and told the office staff he wished to pull the student from classes because she had been bullied. He said she would be transferring to St. Columbkille, a private school in Brighton.

The staff found this puzzling, as the student had enrolled at English School less than a week before, on June 8, and there was barely a week remaining in the school year.

“Concerned there may be some sort of custodial issue with the parents, the school began to ask from the district all of the enrollment paperwork,” the police report said.

The paperwork included the name of a social worker at the Department of Children and Families, but a school administrator was told nobody by that name worked there.

It was discovered that in the 2022-23 school year, the student had also attended Jeremiah E. Burke High School, in Dorchester, and Brighton High School, in a scheme involving multiple pseudonyms, Skipper said.

“I am deeply troubled that an adult would breach the trust of our school communities by posing as a student,” the superintendent said in a statement. “This appears to be a case of extremely sophisticated fraud.”

The statement continued: “While the investigation is in its early stages and remains ongoing, school officials have not identified any incidents of harm to students or staff.”

No motivation for the alleged ruse was announced.

Last week, a 28-year-old woman and her mother were arrested in Luling, Louisiana, after it was discovered that the daughter had posed as a teenager and attended a public high school for the entire academic year.

Sheriff Greg Champagne of St. Charles Parish said the younger woman enrolled so she could improve her English. She and her mother were arrested on suspicion of “injuring public records,” as they had presented a fraudulent passport and birth certificate.